Medical treatments have conventionally been carried out in which therapeutic medications are formulated as infusions which are administered intravenously. Infusions employing therapeutic medications in the form of anticancer agents, nutrients, and the like must typically be administered in high dosages. Furthermore, where a plurality of medications are combined, each infusion must be administered in order, and the total administration dosage is quite high. On the other hand, as administration of infusions continues, because a sudden rise in the concentration of a drug within the blood increases the risk of occurrence of anaphylactic shock, cardiac arrhythmia, and other such side effects, there is a need for physicians and nurses to carefully continue to adjust infusion administration dose while monitoring the condition of the patient. However, carrying out administration by adjusting amount by means of injection is difficult, and as administration time goes on and the number of administrations increases, the patient experiences an increasing amount of bodily pain and is placed under an increasing amount of stress. For this reason, intravenous drip infusion is widely used as a technique for easily and continuously administering infusions to patients intravenously. During intravenous drip infusion, an infusion set is employed as medical equipment for causing a container having an infusion sealed therewithin to be connected to an intravenous drip needle that has been inserted within a blood vessel of the patient.
Infusion sets in general use conventionally employ soft tubing to link the container having the infusion sealed therewithin with the intravenous drip needle, a mechanism employing a roller clamp and a drip chamber being provided midway along said soft tubing. In addition, infusion sets have moreover been proposed in which the arrangement is split into multiple sets of infusions to link a plurality of containers having infusions sealed therewithin for the purpose of accommodating medical treatment in which a plurality of infusions are continuously administered in sequence (see Patent Reference No. 1 and Patent Reference No. 2).
Furthermore, where a plurality of medications were administered in the form of infusions, particular attention has been required so as to avoid mixture of solutions for which mixture is contraindicated and so as to see that administration is carried out in the correct order. Because the type and number of therapeutic agents are different for every patient, infusion sets must be prepared that are reassembled in correspondence thereto. However, it is often the case that the containers employed for infusions have similar external appearance. For this reason, mixups with respect to the order in which spikes pierce containers, confusion as to which infusion line should be used for different anticancer agent solutions, mistaken order of administration, and other such accidents can easily occur.
Measures have therefore been adopted by applying labels to the various containers at the time that the infusions are prepared, attaching written warnings, and so forth to clearly specify administration procedure, and to make the various containers recognizable. Furthermore, measures have been adopted in attempts to prevent mistaken attachment of medical equipment through employment of colored molded members made of plastic and so forth (see Patent Reference No. 3).
However, there has been a need for an infusion set to be provided at a site where medical treatment is carried out in such fashion as to permit it to be ready for instant use. There has therefore been provision of a manufactured infusion set which is sterilized in advance, this then being sealed within a sterilized pouch-like package (see Patent Reference No. 4).